hey

so i'm in london now. 10 days of life hunting (job/flat/etc) and then a stopover in the US and back here in a few more weeks. (i've switched the timezone stamp to BST :) )

clem is touristing with me. i have an interview with a teaching agency this PM.

pictures to follow.

like crack

i shouldn't buy more dolls. i'm moving to london. and i have no job there. and i should save my money.

i broke my "no new doll clothes" freeze last week when i bought 2 (pricey, but lovely) trench coats from angelagordon. sooo pretty. but cost me a pretty penny.

and then there's miss sally rice. i resisted her at first. "she's funny looking," i said. "she's got the trout pout," i said. and then i've seen her and seen her and she's grown on me. and i thought about getting her in march. and i resisted. and then april. and i resisted. and now it's june and her price is skyrocketing and i feared if i didn't get her now, i never would. so i did. a pretty lightly customized girl (3 new sets of chips, gaze lift, and new blue lashes).

(hope the seller doesn't mind the photoshare...) just a touch off being stock. but funky cool. she'll be waiting for me when i get to wisconsin (along with some HoP and eurotrash...).

no more spendies. it's an expensive addiction. better than hard drugs, but perhaps as costly?? (maybe not...i really have no idea about such things and am happy to keep it that way). anyhow, i'll have no suitcase room when i move for things like clothes and apartment-y things, if i've got gobs of dolls. dangerous water, that.

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in other news, i've been trying to make some music recordings. thus far i realized that my voice picks up much more nicely (and in a decent tone) than my autoharp. it's an ongoing process. i want to really actually record my little album o'covers-i-love before summer's end. i may not do anything with it, other than have it and be proud of myself for doing it, but i'll be glad to have it if i finish.

c'est fin!

apart from adding a pullring charm. she's done.



Before (French Trench SBL):
- bobbed haircut
- ruined makeup
- messed up scalp flanges
- giant pry marks on the faceplates

After (Madge, a 6th birthday gift for my little friend M.):
- Bangs cut
- lips re-painted (not so perfectly...)
- makeup re-applied w/chalks (a little more blush on the way after seeing these photos)
- eyelids painted
- eyelashes added
- freckles added
- awful prying gaps sanded to smooth
- thatching more-or-less fixed
- 1 set chips painted (unable to do anything about the scratched stock blues :( )
- sleep eyes given

coming soon...

an update on the fate of madge, the sad little bait blythe!

all-in-all, she'll be my first real custom (save for pomona's lips). she's not perfect. oh, no. not even close. i made a rather big eyelid booboo. but she's still cute. and once her scalp is reattached (currently, she's rocking the hostage-in-rubberbands look), i shall make her hair lovley, spruce her up all over, and take some fun shots.

she'll be the coolest 6th birthday present evah.

getting to know (me)

sort-of tagged by elsie. a bit of a "getting to know you" q&a meme. since i've started trying to blog more about things including me and not just me-in-relation-to-my-crafts, i thought i'd share a bit with the tiny handful of blog readers i have.

What is your current obsession?
Perler beads (sort of). London.

What's for dinner?
Hell if I know. In my current situation, I mostly just do the dishes as my contribution to dinner (or, more specifically, I usually dry the dishes as I suck at hand washing dishes unless by necessity).

What's the last thing you bought?
Some internet cards (Armenia does the pre-paid thing for dial-up, which is all I can get at the house :( ). Otherwise some ice cream. Stuff-wise, I got The Thin White Duke a kickass birthday present from etsy a couple weeks ago.

I really don't buy much here.

What are you listening to right now?
Literally, the sounds of cars on the highway outside my classroom. Generally, I've been enjoying Laura Marling a lot for a couple weeks now.

If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go?
Just an hour? Hm. Washington Island, WI. Or Columbia, MO. Or Madison, WI to get Taco Bell nachos, Sonic slushies, and Chin's cream cheese puffs and 10 ingredient fried rice. I would probably be very ill afterward. But I'd be happy.

What's your favorite quote (for now)?
"The world is full of guys...be a man." Corey in Say Anything...

"Well-behaved women rarely make history." Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (though I've also seen this quoted as "seldom" rather than "rarely.")

"A woman is like a tea bag - you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water." Eleanor Roosevelt.

What's your favorite piece of clothing in your own wardrobe?
Oooh. Tough question. I have a couple great dresses. And my no-longer-made Bitten jeans with the little purple Sharpie stain on the thigh. Depends on the day, I think.

What's your dream job?
To be able to teach in the mornings and craft in the afternoons/evenings and be able to make a living at it. Making some music in there would be pretty good too.

What's your worst habit?
When I'm stressed I bite my nails. And my bedrooms wherever I've lived are always messy.

Do you admire anyone's style?
Well, this one will sound totally weird, I'm sure, but my friend Stuart has a friend Libby who happens to have a Blythe. He told me this and linked me to her Flickr stream. She takes a lot of self-portraits. And has the most awesome style. I pretty much want to steal her closet and its contents. (I'd post a photo here, but she has her settings as to not allow such things).

Describe your personal style?
Not sassy enough. Jeans that fit. Summery dresses. Pigtails (braids). Quite often a bit heavy with the eyemakeup (or at the very least heavy on the mascara).

What are your favorite movies?







...to name a few

What inspires you?
anything and everything. it changes on a daily basis.

What's your favorite book?
Brave New World. Though I've not reread it in a few years. I don't hide the fact that I love the Princess Diaries series and the Georgia Nicolson series. I've always had a fondness for the lightness of YA lit.

Do you collect something?
Blythes. Pez dispensers. yarn???


What do you like most about yourself?
Physically: my eyes
Generally: my recent ability to embrace big dreams and go for them, no matter what anyone else seems to think.

What's your go-to nail polish color?
Revlon Black Cherry - for toes I love it and sometimes for fingers.
Rimmel's Apricot somethingorother is a fun peachy pink for summer. With a hint of goldy shimmer. I used to have a great pale pink, but it's dead and no longer made. :(




Read it? Liked it? Tag - you're it.

cute cute cute and cute

after 2 months of not getting a project done, this month i conquered the blythe runway challenge! woohoo! the challenge for may was to take items from the grocery store and create an outfit from them. no fabric, if possible. of course, some just bought dishcloths and sewed up a dress and such. but i thought "ooh, finally a use for those bizarre waste-of-packaging apple cushions!" and i took this:


and turned it into this:




tada!!!!

not too shabby, says i. not too fancy, either. some of the other contestants were a lot fancier. but i tried to follow the rules of not using much other than what i could find. so 2 pieces of scotch tape and the materials and that was it. crappy photos, yeah. but it was nearly 11pm and i don't have a light tent or any such fancy sort of thing. just me and a lamp. so i did what i could.

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in other news, i ordered myself some new needles. now, i am of the small (and growing, if i sleuth correctly) number of people who LOOOOOOVE the circular needles from KA (kinki amibari), which is a japanese company. i was introduced to them by chance when i purchased "the cheap" circulars at lakeside fibers. but, as it turns out, KA needles are a million times nicer than cheap-o clovers that you can get anywhere and they cost less too! they're smooth, they have rotating joins, so the yarn just goes smoothy smooth smooth without having to untwist the cable every so often and all sorts of other nice things. so when i found out last fall that they had an interchangeable set, i was all over it. and yet, no one thought that i really wanted such a thing for christmas...and then i was not in any sort of mood to buy things for me. but now i am! and now i was thinking about how i wanted to get some more sizes of needles before london. and i remembered the set i wanted: KA's "switch." they cost about $100, bu t they'll be worth it. now i'm set for size 5-15 and just need to make sure i've got smaller sizes (because, yeah, i use them! i chose the pink polka dot fabric case. they come in vinyl cases now too, if you like, but i don't want cold, crackable vinyl. i much prefer fabric. and pink w/white dots sounds fun. i like fun. it'll go well with my funky birdie needle roll. there's a video about the set here:

it's from paradise fibers, but i didn't order from them. i went with roxy yarns as it saved me $5 and then i could order some of the uber cute KA heart-shaped bamboo stich markers, too!. plus free shipping. and it's a local shop if i were to live in brooklyn. i know people in brooklyn, so i feel like i'm supporting their neighbors. yay!

so those should be there when i get to WI. it's been a good night for crafting. yay for that.

ooooh tunes

i'd been putting together a sunshiney mix of music recently. and then the recently mentioned ms. elsie did the same. "neato," thought i. but then she posted a playable playlist.

and i totally stole the idea.

one month from today i will be in london. !!!!!!!!